Horrifying Stories Made Comforting and Anodyne: Kvothe Edition
by Trygvasson
Summary: In which Kvothe manages not to offend Denna by being completely honest for a change.


**I make no claim to the wind's name. All hail the dark lord of the twin moons.**

 **(AKA Rothfuss. The twin moons thing is a Hertzfeldt reference).**

At first it was her voice that caught my breath, then it was the music.

But before ten lines had passed her lips I was stunned for different reasons. She sang the story of Myr Tariniel's fall. Of Lanre's betrayal. It was the story I had heard from Skarpi in Tarbean. But Denna's version was different. In her song, Lanre was painted in tragic tones, a good man wrongly used. Lanre was no traitor, but a fallen hero... It was dreadfully, painfully wrong.

The song was beautiful, though. I saw what it could become. It would turn men's minds. You've probably heard it, in fact. Most folk have. She ended up calling it "The Song of Seven Sorrows."

The last notes faded in the air, Denna lowered her hands, unwilling to meet my eye.

I sat, still and silent on the grass.

For this to make sense, you need to understand something every musician knows. Singing a new song is a nervous thing. More than that, it's terrifying. It's like undressing for the first time in front of a new lover. It's a delicate moment.

I needed to say something. A compliment. A comment. A joke. A lie. Anything was better than silence.

But I couldn't have been more stunned if she had written a hymn praising the Duke of Gibea. The shock was simply too much for me. I looked down dumbly at my hands. I heard the rustle of Denna's skirts as she moved. I needed to say something. I'd already waited too long. There was too much silence in the air.

"The city's name wasn't Mirinitel," I said without looking up.

There was a pause. "What?"

"Not Mirinitel," I repeated. "The city Lanre burned was Myr Tariniel. Sorry. Changing a name is hard work. It will wreck the meter in a third of your verses." I was surprised at how quiet my voice was, how flat and dead it sounded in my own ears.

"You've heard the story before?"

I looked up at her surprised and excited face and nodded. I felt a hollowness in my stomach, my own buried despair a horrible discordance with Denna's cautiously budding delight. I looked down again, as if the weight of the past was borne around my neck. I found some detached part of me began to speak: "The music is lovely. You tell your story well, with strength and subtlety in the lyrics... but that's not how that story goes. What made you pick this for a song?"

"I found a version of it in an old book when I was doing genealogical research for my patron..." She gave me a curious look. "I thought I was going to be able to surprise you with something new. I never would have guessed you'd heard of Lanre."

"I heard it years ago," I said numbly. "From an old storyteller in Tarbean..." Something inside me broke. I looked up at her, beautiful, excited, nervous. I was empty. I stood suddenly, and a wave of dizziness and nausea swept through me. My hands were shaking, and I was amazed at how hard it was to make them stop. "I can't," I said suddenly. "I just can't." Tears formed and I turned from her, stumbling back along the path.

"Kvothe?" She hurried after me, took my trembling arm, caught me. "What the hell, Kvothe! What's wrong?"

"...I can't."

"Sit down." I crumpled, and she held my shoulders, steadying me. She looked into my face, though I could not meet her eyes through my tears. "Kvothe. What is it?"

I shook my head.

"You can tell me."

I couldn't. But I had the nagging urge to say something. Anything to turn the subject away from the obvious: I was hurt. I was damaged. I was vulnerable... My parents had been killed when I was eleven. It was an event so huge and horrifying it had driven me nearly mad. I had never told a soul about it, never whispered it to an empty room. It was my secret, clutched tight and buried deep so that to divulge it would be to pry open my chest and make me bleed. I _could not_ tell her. So I said something else. I babbled, the words that had fled me rushing back in a crude defense. "I'm sorry, but you must listen, listen! You've got the whole thing wrong. The story I know is completely different. Lanre was a monster. A traitor. You need to change it." My voice gained urgency. "So much depends on how you tell the story...it's not your fault. Your version ended early. It was a good story. But it's not about what makes a good story. It's about what's _true_. Ugly truth. Buried truth. Dangerous truth."

I was confusing her and offending her. I knew I was. I was also hysterical, and she understood that, though she didn't understand why. And she forgave me, perfect girl. This was supposed to be her moment, and she gave it up for me, because I was wounded and raw, and most importantly her friend. "Shh...It's just a story. Just a story. None of the places are real. None of the people are real."

"Some stories are just stories. Not this one." I trembled and smelled the ghost of blood and burning hair, tasted ashes again on my tongue. _Someone's parents have been singing entirely the wrong kind of songs._ I looked up in renewed panic. Now Denna was singing the song. I swiped at the tears in my eyes and took Denna's hand, trying to convey my sense of urgency. "In the version of the story I heard, Lanre became one of the Chandrian. You should be careful. Some stories are dangerous. _This_ story is true, and dangerous. I know it sounds crazy..." I broke off my tirade, too afraid to say more. Too afraid to give up my secret. I met Denna's eyes at last, pleading with her to trust me, to understand, to take my word, to not ask for proof.

Her eyes couldn't lie. She did not believe me. She did not believe her heroic Lanre could be the villain in another story. But she saw at least the truth that was in my eyes: that this was important to me, that I cared for her, that I couldn't say more. Not now. She smiled as a mother smiles at an anxious child. She took her own hurt, irritation, and disappointment, and swallowed them. She led me back to our greystone, frowning worriedly as I immediately sat to huddle in its lee, leaning my head against the cool, flat surface and breathing slowly and deliberately. "What do I do with you?" I heard her mutter to herself.

I started laughing, the gasping laugh of someone still choked with tears and snot. "I'm sorry," I managed.

Denna grinned and offered me a handkerchief. "I mean, I _hoped_ my song might move men to tears, but, well..." She trailed off again. "It's not really time for banter, is it? But I never really know what else to do with you..." Her brow furrowed. "Now I'm making a mess of things again."

"No you're not," I said nasally. "I did, and I'm sorry. It's just..."

"You can't." She nodded. "And that's ok." She scooted over and hugged me close. "Someday, when you can, I will be there."

"...Thank you."

"But if you _can_ tell me your version of the story in the meantime..."

"I will. Just not right now."

"I'll hold you to that."

"Just hold me."

And she did. She held me until I was able to gather my frazzled strands of thought back into a working mind. We walked back to town in silence, and I kissed her cheek good night without her ever broaching the subject of her song and my frankly bizarre reaction to it. I think that day was the day we discovered the real strength in our relationship. It takes a great deal of care to accept when a mystery must remain unspoken. That day, Denna knew I had a secret past, and she acknowledged that the secret was mine to keep as long as I needed to. But more importantly, she also offered up herself as a refuge for the day the secret could come forth. That willingness to accept a secret but not to seek it is something rare and precious that only occurs on a bedrock of trust. I was humbled that day - the boy who had been sneaking after her in a vain attempt to discover her secrets. My snooping was rooted in besottedness, but deepened love is what stopped me from similar antics in the months and years that followed. Denna trusted me to tell her when I was ready, and so I eventually decided to follow her example and trust her as well, which is, I'm certain, why she finally told me the sorry truths you already know, the truths that set me on the path that earned me the name of "Kingkiller."

That unhappy conclusion aside, you can thank Denna's offer of trust that I am willing to tell _you_ my story now, because I entrusted my deepest secrets to her first.

* * *

"Darling, you flatter me," Denna interrupted from the doorway, causing both Kvothe and Chronicler to look up.

Kvothe smiled. "If I do, it's because you deserve it."

Denna grinned and poured herself a glass of Avennish fruit wine before coming to sit next to him and kissing him on the cheek. "True. Imagine what would have happened if you'd kept all that to yourself all these years, never talked it over with anyone before-" She snapped her fingers.

"...Before infiltrating the royal court and killing the demon inhabiting the king?" Chronicler ventured.

"Ha! More like riding in to the capital with blazing sword in one hand and a howling breeze in the other and blowing down half the palace in the mistaken belief that the Chandrian were there," Denna laughed.

"Also, the king was not actually inhabited by a demon," Kvothe said wryly.

" _What?!_ Of course he was! None of the stories I've heard would make sense if there wasn't a demon involved..."

"All in good time, my dear Chronicler. There is much you do not yet know about me that will made clear. You should know better than anyone that stories have a way of changing, rewriting themselves so that heroes become villains, villains heroes, and perfectly normal happenings the most dire designs of supernatural forces."

"Giant cow-lizards become dragons."

Kvothe's lips quirked. "Quite."

Chronicler sighed. "I suppose there is that."

Kvothe clapped his hands together. "On with the story, then."

"And on, and on, and on..." Denna groaned.

"Quiet you."

"Yes, dear."

 **Author's Note: Kvothe has a way with BS words: always able to speak without saying. So here's an alternative scene where he says without speaking, and ends up in a much happier place vis a vis Denna because of it (although still in hiding because he, you know, killed a king), in honor of the lovely _Toast_ series "Horrifying Stories Made Comforting and Anodyne." (This is a counterpoint series to their "Children's Stories Made Horrific," my favorite of which was assuredly Curious George, with Stockholm Syndrome :)) I have several other comforting versions of horrifying stories on this site, including one featuring Marvel's Loki, and one featuring Superman.**


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